My Medea
by SilverStarsAndMoons
Summary: And this child I would destroy, for I hold her pain most dear. How controlling was Ellis? Why the bond between Richard and Meredith? Is he tied to her by the memory of abuse? Ellis and Richard's relationship with the common thread: Meredith Grey. Oneshot


My Medea

_Inside the labyrinth walls_

_There lies a tiny child who sleeps alone_

_And as the daylight falls_

_The wind becomes so wild across the stone._

"I don't want it."

They're simple words, and Thatcher tries to catch her hand, but she turns from him; her blonde hair is gleaming in the shaft of sunlight falling into her office; her shoulders are straight and stiff. Ellis Grey is the last person who should be a mother, but Thatcher wants a child like he's never wanted anything else. There's got to be a woman in that cold surgeon somewhere; he knows that because he's felt her passion. He knows she can be warm.

"Ellis . . . please."

"No, Thatch. A child this early in my residency? You must be more of an idiot than you look. I can't be changing diapers and cleaning vomit when I'm trying to learn how to do a cardiac embolectomy."

"I'll take care of it, Ellis. You can go back to work whenever you want."

"This isn't a puppy, Thatcher; this is a child. I don't need one right now and neither do you. You've just started the oncology research project. Do you really want to take time out from that for a family?" The word family is spat at him, like a gobbet of saliva trying to erase a bad taste from the mouth.

Thatcher bows his head. "Fine. Do what you want with it. You always do. You always have done before."

She turns to him slightly, surprised to hear him give in so suddenly. "Thatch." Her voice is soft. "I just don't think that it would work right now. We've only been married for a year. Don't you want to enjoy us?" She twines her arms around his neck and he bows his head to touch her lips, which, as always, are dry and hard.

"I want to enjoy us. I want to enjoy the person that we can make together."

She bows her head against his shoulder; he whispers through the soft fall of hair and when she looks up, her face is resigned.

Eight months and five days later, Meredith Elizabeth Grey is born prematurely. She's a tiny, colicky baby with a tendency to turn blue suddenly, and for the first two weeks of her life, she's hooked up to a respirator. Ellis visits the nursery exactly twice; Thatcher is there every day until a research project in California takes him away. When the baby is taken off the ventilator, she lies under the heat lamp in her isolette, crying constantly. Richard Webber, general surgeon, comes upon her while checking on a preemie that he helped to deliver three days ago.

"Meredith Grey. Mother: Ellis Grey," he reads, and then looks up as Ellis bustles into the room. "What are her stats today?"

"I don't know," he replies, looking surprised. "I didn't know you had a daughter."

"Yes; she was born a few weeks ago. Now, do you know how she's doing today or not, Richard?" They know each other from being in the same intern group, but Ellis was focused on doing well and after they'd gone into their second year of residency, their paths had rarely crossed. He's surprised she still knows him after four years.

He wordlessly hands Ellis Meredith's chart and she skims it. "It says here that she'll be ready to discharge tomorrow. Shit," she mutters under her breath. Richard's still taken aback by the fact that she actually has a newborn – she's wearing scrubs; her hair is perfect, and she looks to be in no pain whatsoever.

"Well, that's good news, isn't it?"

"I suppose." She turns away, but he calls her back. "Maybe you want to feed her?" He points at the crying baby, but she turns her back. "Page a nurse. I want to get to the gallery. Dr. Lyman's doing a complicated hysterectomy and I want to see it." She leaves without another word, and Richard is left standing awkwardly beside her daughter's isolette.

Without thinking, he reaches in and takes the small hot bundle into his arms. Her arms and legs are like sticks and her tiny head fits perfectly into the palm of his hand. He holds her close, feeling her little fingers attach to the edge of his white lab coat and her body curl against his chest. This little one is practically dying for someone to touch her. She's not much to look at, but when she opens her eyes to reveal milky-blue irises, he can't help but think she's the most beautiful child he's ever seen.

Ellis is back at the hospital after three months, dropping baby Meredith unceremoniously off in the hospital's daycare. They've called her several times through the day to ask what they should do about prickly little Meredith, who won't stop screaming unless you jiggle her up and down constantly, but she refuses to answer her page because she's in a five-hour brain surgery. They end up calling Thatcher, who doesn't really know what to do, either, but manages to shut the baby up by sticking a bottle in her mouth. Unfortunately, they tell him that if Ellis can't be reached, Meredith can't stay in the daycare. He absorbs this news with devastation.

He stands in front of the surgical board, trying to get the formula to run into Meredith's mouth and not down the side of her face. After the neuro surgery, Ellis has an appendectomy and then back-to-back tonsillectomies before she doesn't appear on the board at all. As he sighs in relief at being able to do some extra work this evening, Meredith chooses this time to throw up all of the formula she just ate all over herself and Thatcher. She looks satisfied for a moment, and then begins to scream again.

"Shit," Thatcher murmurs, and does what he can to clean up the mess before it drips onto the floor. At that moment, Ellis comes out of the OR, looking tired. "Thatcher?"

"Ellis. Thank God. Can you take her? I really have to go back to work; they called me because she wouldn't stop crying and –"

"No, Thatch, I cannot take her. I'm on my way to an appendectomy. You would know that if you read the damn board once in awhile," she snaps, brushing by him without even looking at the baby. Thatcher sighs loudly. "Ellis, please!"

She turns back. "Fine. But she's your responsibility when I'm at work. You promised."

He doesn't mention that she rarely gets up at night with Meredith anyway. "Okay." He watches as Ellis takes the baby with a practiced, professional move and pats her back. "Okay, okay. You're fine now, Meredith."

She never uses terms of endearment. She never holds the baby longer than she has to. Thatcher is the one who walks the floor with Meredith; Thatcher is the one who sings her bad impressions of Bob Dylan songs and dangles primary-coloured toys above her head to get her to move her eyes back and forth. She doesn't smile often, but she smiles for him.

Thatcher takes off and Ellis is left with Meredith, who is quiet, at least. She puts her head on her mother's shoulder and falls asleep, and Ellis studies the OR board until she's startled by Richard Webber.

"She's getting big!" His pleased exclamation causes Ellis to jump, but the baby doesn't wake up. "Richard! Don't startle me like that."

"Sorry." He strokes the blonde fuzz on Meredith's head and smiles. "She's adorable, Ellis."

"Yeah, well. Do you have surgery right now?"

"No. I'm done for the day."

"Can you watch her, then? I've got to get to my appendectomy."

"Sure, but –"

"Richard, I've got to go." She gives him a fleeting smile and he smiles back as he cradles her sleeping baby. She runs down the hall, and then turns back. "Thank you."

"It's fine, Ellis."

_For I have made her prison be_

_Her every step away from me_

_And this child I would destroy_

_If you tried to set her free._

Richard Webber is having marital problems. It's nothing new, and certainly nothing secret – everything at Seattle Grace hospital is fair game for gossip. Adele is bothering him for a child, but he knows that at this point in his residency, he'd never be around. Richard isn't one to absentee-father; he's a hands-on dad or he isn't. The subject came up when she caught him chasing two-year-old Meredith Grey around the hospital after Ellis was forced to pick her up early from daycare. He would love a child . . . he just doesn't know if he wants one right now.

So, she kicked him out for the night and now he's pacing the hospital up and down, kicking himself for being so insensitive. He almost wishes, actually, that a trauma situation would come in so he'd have surgery to take his mind off of things. Finding himself in front of the OR board looking for a surgery to scrub in seems to be the norm, these days.

Ellis Grey is juggling Meredith, who is crying, and trying to lug a diaper bag, her purse, and a briefcase no doubt filled with paperwork down the hallway. She's yelling at the baby, who is struggling to stop sobbing, and Richard can't stand it, so he walks towards her. "Ellis."

"Richard, for Christ's sake, I can't focus on polite conversation right now. She" – pointing at Meredith – "has just shit her pants, and I have to get home in time for Thatcher, who is coming back from a conference tonight, and I have a million things to do for work tonight because the Chief wants them for tomorrow." She's breathing hard and her eyes are snapping, and even in her indignation and annoyance, she's beautiful, and her daughter looks exactly like her. He realizes, belatedly, as he takes Meredith from her arms, that he hasn't seen the baby smile in recent memory.

Meredith clings to his coat and buries her head in his shoulder. She's tired, and she's smelly, and she's sticky with some sort of red candy, but he enjoys her warm weight as he speaks to Ellis. "Why don't you take a minute, Ellis, and look after your daughter? You can change her and then I'll help sort through this paperwork so that you can go home to your husband."

"Thank you, Richard; you're a star." Ellis gives him a smile and snatches the baby back. "I cannot wait until you're potty-trained," he hears her snapping at the child and tries to close his ears. He's flipping through the twenty charts that she has stuffed into her briefcase when she comes back out from the ladies' washroom with a tear-stained Meredith on her hip. As soon as she sees Richard, Meredith stretches out her arms and, surprised, Richard takes her back.

"She likes you," Ellis remarks. "She's always been one to go to a complete stranger." Richard says nothing.

Ellis discusses the charts with him while he admires the light of the florescent bulbs on her hair. Ellis has this soft look about her, but it ends at her hair. Her face is all business, and when she takes sleeping Meredith back, it doesn't soften. He can't help wondering what Ellis would be like in bed, but pushes the thought down. He also wonders why she has a child when she clearly has no time for her, but he doesn't let his brain articulate that, either.

When they part ways at the hospital doors, she shifts the baby to her other arm and gives him a quick kiss on the cheek. "You've been amazing tonight. Thank you."

"Sure."

She disappears into the night, and Richard has this feeling that she never existed at all.

The following months, Richard and Ellis start to see each other much more on hospital grounds. They seem to be placed in the same surgeries; they meet each other by surprise in the gallery and find themselves at the same table in the cafeteria. She's often got Meredith with her, who has developed into a serious-faced toddler with a perpetually bored or upset expression. Richard gets a smile out of her one day when he lets her play with his stethoscope, but it's a long time in coming as she tracks him with her distrustful blue eyes that are a copy of her mother's.

It happens in the scrub room after an emergency cholecystectomy; as Richard dries his hands, Ellis wraps her cold ones around his arm and pulls him close. They kiss with the lights flickering above them and the water rushing into the sink, and Richard pushes down his second thoughts because he's not done with his first impressions. At the end of it all, Ellis's lips are bruised and red, and Richard aches with desire that Adele is not satisfying.

_So come to me, my love_

_I'll tap into your strength and drain it dry_

_Can never have enough_

_For you, I'd burn the length and breadth of sky._

It escalates after that – sex with Ellis is as explosive as he had originally imagined. She claws bruises into his back; he fucks her hard against the on-call room mattress because she's like a fire that won't be quelled. He's exhausted from back-to-back surgeries, but she commands his attention; she grabs his hair; she slaps his face when she gets too sexually frustrated because he just won't move. Even if he wasn't aroused before, he can't deny her. She's got him chained; it's the passion of an unforgivable affair.

It bothers him that Meredith is around for much of their rendezvous. Of course, the three-year-old isn't there during the sex, but she sees them kiss; she rides on Richard's shoulders; she goes on the merry-go-round while they hold hands like they're her parents instead of just Ellis.

She says nothing and her eyes don't betray them, but she knows how to talk and although it's beautiful, it hurts him that she calls him Daddy when they're playing on the floor of the on-call room with a wind-up toy that Thatcher gave her. She cries when she has an accident because Ellis ignores her for half the day and no one thinks to take her to the toilet, and he aches with the thought of her sitting on a hard chair staring at the wall while she waits for Ellis to get out of surgery and pay some damn attention to her.

Ellis refuses to find another daycare for her, even though Thatcher is away most of the time, now. With an absentee wife and daughter, why would he stay? Meredith is looked after by whatever nurse is on-call, because it's cheap and they love the sweet little blonde-haired tot, who's still smaller than most of the children her age, even though by three they say preemies should have caught up.

He can't focus too much on Meredith when he's fucking Ellis, though.

When Meredith turns five, they take her to the merry-go-round in the pouring rain and Ellis is silent until Richard finally loses his temper.

"What the fuck, Ellis? I don't understand what your problem is."

"You need to leave Adele, is the problem, Richard." Her voice is always so matter-of-fact; she never stutters, never falters. "I can't keep doing this. It's been almost two years and you go home to her every night."

"She's my wife!"

"And you should be my husband. Meredith should be your daughter. She barely knows her father, anyway."

"Why did you have a child?"

"Thatcher wanted one."

"Is that it?"

"Yes. I would have never had a child if I'd had the choice. You know surgery is my life, Richard. It's what I love about you – you're so focused, I don't have time for the soccer mom stuff." She pulls him to her and his eyes widen as her hand clasps him through his pants. "I want you to myself."

"You always were a selfish bitch."

"You're hurtful today."

"I can't leave Adele, Ellis. What in God's name would we ever build our relationship on? You're an excellent fuck, but it's all passion between us."

"I'm in love with you; isn't that reason enough, Richard?"

"You're not in love with me. You're in love with the idea of me. And the way you treat Meredith sickens me sometimes. Do you not have an ounce of love for that girl?"

She pauses, tears on her cheeks. "You can't leave me. Not after this long."

"You didn't answer my question."

"You love her."

"So do you!"

"Yes, I do. And I can't stand it if you leave us both. You would leave me with an absent husband and a five-year-old who adores you . . ."

"Don't. Don't guilt me."

"You're the only father figure she has, Richard!"

"I can't listen to this."

He turns and she screams something unintelligible; but the last image he has is the stricken look on Meredith's face as she whirls around on the merry-go-round.

_For it's my thoughts that bind me here_

_It's this love that I most fear_

_And this child I would destroy_

_For I hold her pain most dear._

"You need to get out of my sight."

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realizes that she's screaming at an eight-year-old who has no idea why her mother hates her, but she can't feel bad. They've moved to Boston and she's thrown Thatcher out; well, that's the story she tells anyway. What really happened was that he found out about Richard when Meredith couldn't stop crying under her bed the night of her fifth birthday. They fought, Ellis and Thatcher; he stood up to her; he would have hit her had he been that kind of man, but he wasn't and he wouldn't let her win. He threw her out and she called Richard's office over and over, begging for forgiveness, while Meredith curled on the couch and screamed into a pillow.

Eventually, he left. Meredith stood at the door and watched him go, and he felt that he could have taken her, this tiny child that no one really wanted but who was a culmination of her parents' failed marriage, anyway. But Ellis is manipulative; Ellis needs Meredith, and he wasn't a strong enough man to fight for her.

In Boston, Meredith is rebellious; she draws on walls and breaks dishes, and generally makes herself a nuisance. Ellis throws herself into surgery and writes Richard letters in the on-call room which he opens and burns in Seattle. He contacts her once and tells her that he wishes to never hear from her again; then reconsiders when he thinks of the little girl he left behind. He doesn't know that she nearly kills herself on Ecstasy in college, trying to feel alive. He doesn't remember her as anything but five years old, and you know? Maybe that's okay.

_No haven for this heart_

_No shelter for this child in mazes lost_

_Heaven keep us apart_

_A curse for every mile of ocean crossed._

Richard hates new interns. He knows he's supposed to like them, but he's getting old and this job's getting tough, and he can't father like he used to. Adele and he have had a quiet marriage; no children. She never asked again after the first fight and he's never pushed. It's been a marriage of vacations that she's gone on alone and late nights of paperwork with a plate of cold dinner beside his elbow.

When he sees her, he does a double-take. It can't be Ellis Grey standing in front of him after all these years? When she turns (and she's got that soft golden hair, too), he remembers the blue eyes and isn't shocked to see the recognition there. He's got an urge to talk to her, but she turns away, and she doesn't know the whole story and it's not up to him to tell her.

It's not surprising that Ellis is also here; what is surprising is that she's got early-onset Alzheimer's disease. He remembers the woman she was when Meredith stands in his office and articulates herself to him. She hasn't got Ellis's direct delivery; her voice is softer, more melodic; tinged with a slight Boston accent and stammery. He sees a lot of Thatcher in her, but when she looks at him, he's reminded of Ellis, and he has to turn away.

She's as tiny as she ever was, and he has to remind himself that she's not still five. She cringes when people talk too loudly; she looks bewildered when she's praised. When she attaches to the prom king of the hospital, he isn't surprised, but has a father's heart for her when he makes her cry the first time.

When she turns out to be a competent surgeon, he feels proud – she learned from the best. It's just too bad she could never give her love.

He speaks to Ellis daily, although she doesn't register it. Reliving his resident years is revitalizing; she hasn't changed a bit, although she has wrinkles around her eyes that weren't there before. He loves to live in her world, even though it's crumbling, and he doesn't feel guilty for taking advantage of a sick woman because the only time he was really alive was the time he was with her. Meredith stands in the background, like she always did; this time, however, he feels the resentment she could never articulate as a child.

_For I must die for what I've done_

_A twist of fate, a desert sun_

_For I see what I destroy_

_Sweet reflection knife into me._

Some people believe in Fate. You're going to treat people like shit, you're going to die a horrible death. If Richard believed in Fate, he would have nodded: Ellis suffering from Alzheimer's and tormented by a broken heart doesn't surprise him. They've said their goodbyes and he's let her go. He's finished with Ellis; he was finished with her the day she broke her newly-confident daughter. Meredith is an empathetic person, despite the lack of care she's been shown; he's really surprised that she's the person she is. She's never deserved Ellis's shit and now she'll never have to take it again.

We're all scary and damaged in some way. He can't help but cradle her again; that poor soft soul, lying on his shoulder at three months old; clinging to his lab coat again at twenty-seven. She sobs like a little girl and he holds her close, despite her accusations; despite her protestations. She's so much like Ellis and yet she can break.

And really, if Fate exists, then it was meant to be. He's been tied to her since birth, and Ellis is a failed Medea.

Personally, he prefers the freed child to the beautiful lover.

_For I see what I destroy_

_I can see what I've begun._


End file.
